


Another Green Spring

by stilitana



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Android Rhys, Body Horror, Ensemble Cast, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Graphic Description, Identity Issues, Injury Recovery, Medical Inaccuracies, Multi, Redemption, Science Fiction, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 05:44:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15430254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stilitana/pseuds/stilitana
Summary: When Helios crashes, it's Yvette who crawls from the rubble to find Rhys, broken and helpless.(Alternate universe wherein Rhys is a Hyperion android and is badly injured in the crash. All other details of canon are preserved as best I can.)





	Another Green Spring

The world is on fire and she is glad. It should be on fire. Were it not already burning she would have started the flames herself just to have the pleasure of watching, just for something to do with all her hopeless rage. Yvette clambered from her escape pod and looked around at her colleagues running and screaming and the metal shrieking down around them and Pandora all raw and ugly like an open wound around them and she smiled. It was not a nice smile. She felt capable of anything.

She went against the crowd running away from the burning remains of Helios. She did not think. There was nothing left to think. They were all as good as dead. She had expected to die, had felt the nothingness and the bitterness, not of the end but of dying so ingloriously, because of Rhys who was no better really than a pouting child. Now that she was still alive she didn’t know quite how to feel or what to do with herself. She didn’t believe it, couldn’t wrap her mind around it. She was alone. She’d been alone before, but then there had still been order, there had been schedules and rules that let her forget her fundamental aloneness, that had propelled her forward meaninglessly but effectively. Now there was nothing.

She staggered past the outer detritus of the wreck, pulling her blouse over her mouth in the vain hope it would filter some of the smoke. The fires were dying here and there. She went towards the center of the chaos. She stood on a rise in the earth and looked down at what was left of Helios.

“Fuck you!” she screamed. “Fuck you, you horrible dead bastards! Fuck your company!”

Yelling made her feel a little better. She screamed some more until her throat hurt, and then she went deeper. She got lost winding through the twisted metal. She didn’t know what she was looking for or what she was doing in the burning belly of Helios. She had a vague sense that while her colleagues ran scared she would pull from this wreckage something essential, something they forgot in their fear that would save her, that would ensure she survived because she was cunning and ruthless and yes, maybe a little out of her mind.

She did not think about the terror on Rhys’ face as he urged her to take the last pod. She did not think about him and his stupid face and his sudden self-sacrificial streak. Pandora must have taught him that, she thought. Hyperion certainly didn’t. Unless they’d programmed it in, and if that was the case, well. That was just sick.

She saw ahead a wide, open area and headed for it. To her surprise as she drew closer she saw that it was Jack’s office. Yes! There had to be something there. Some reward for being the last woman standing, the one to brave the smoke and fire. She hurried forward, crawling on her hands and knees beneath a beam until she was through.

She was so busy gazing around the office that she nearly tripped over the body. Or what was left of the body, that is. She took a step back and looked down and then stared for a long silent moment, not wanting to comprehend, not wanting it to be so. She blinked, but it was still there. Rhys, on the ground, in pieces. Torn apart.

All at once Yvette’s former numb bravado fled her body. She fell to her knees, a strangled sob-scream clawing up her throat. Her hands clutched her head. Her scream was hoarse and choked. She felt the heat and the nausea from inhaling smoke and from the sight before her, she felt the scrapes and bruises on her body, she felt her terror and loss and grief and confusion. She wanted again to be numb but couldn’t manage it.

Her hands shook as she reached this way and that, fluttered them over Rhys, not sure where to touch or why she’d bother. She took deep gulps of air and even pinched herself, hoping to pull herself together.

Rhys was in a puddle of blood and the thick, clear ooze in which some of his most delicate parts were suspended, a sticky goo that was never, ever supposed to be exposed to air. That meant...something. She panicked, drew a blank, forced herself to even her breathing and think. She’d read his manuals cover to cover three times each. She’d read it all because he couldn’t be trusted to take care of himself and somebody had to, for god’s sake. It meant the damage was severe and would be permanent if she didn’t act fast, all of which was obvious anyway.

There was nobody else in the room. Whoever had done this had gotten away. She hoped they weren’t lingering. Whoever was capable of such brutality, of wounds clearly inflicted with bare hands, was somebody she didn’t want to meet. But...didn’t she know? Couldn’t it have only been one person, the one he’d brought the station down trying to kill?

There was a sharp piece of metal, rebar maybe, protruding from his stomach. His right arm was — gone. No, there it was, impaled on a spike, torn off by blunt force, both it and his shoulder leaking wires and blood and ooze. And his face...his face…

Something had torn through his neck and yanked the blue links of his spinal cord out of alignment. It must have been the last injury he’d sustained, as it had snapped a few vital wires and no doubt initiated the emergency shut down mode he was in, judging by the faintest blue glow coming from his damaged port. The port looked like it had been stabbed and mangled beyond use. What had been a neat circular indentation in his skull was a gaping, jagged wound, and his eye...was not an eye any longer. The skin beneath it on the left side of his face had come off as though someone had clawed at it and was hanging in a jagged strip off his jawline, exposing blood and the clear plating that was his bone and the underside of his round optic implant and the teeth inside his mouth and the blue and gray wires and bits and pieces and…

She had to look away for a moment and take deep breaths to force down her nausea. She knew that not everyone would be so affected by the sight of him like this. She’d known him many years and from experience could recall several occasions where an injury on Rhys elicited no reaction from anybody but her and Vaughn, who were as grossed out or concerned as they would be about a similar injury on anybody else. She knew he felt pain the same as she did, that he thought of his body as his own, not as a machine, and would’ve felt the same horror as she would have at being so thoroughly mutilated.

She turned back around. It was the injury to his neck that most disturbed her because she couldn’t figure out how it had happened until she glanced up and saw the razor sharp edge of a protruding sheet of metal hanging at about head height.

She took his face in her hands and was shocked to find herself crying. Snot and tears made tracks through the ash on her face. He’d betrayed her, locked her in that cell...and then later he had come back for her, had encouraged her to take the last pod. And now she was crying over his corpse. It didn’t make sense.

No...not a corpse, she reminded herself. The port was faintly glowing, or what was left of it.

She knew she needed to act but that she wouldn’t stand a chance at fixing him, let alone surviving on Pandora, alone. She remembered what she’d read about emergency shutdowns and forced reboots and manual overrides. When she lifted his head to get a better look at him, to her horror it easily separated from his neck with a sickening squelch and a snap that reminded her of popping open a soda can. The noise nearly made her wretch and when it didn’t she felt almost ashamed because she realized she’d been wrong earlier; Rhys’ injuries did not elicit the same visceral reaction she would have had had he been human. She would have long ago been throwing her guts up, would never have been able to take his head in her hands. She’d told herself the whole time she knew him and his ‘condition’ as they called it that she thought no differently of him. Well, now cruel reality had torn that pretty thought away. She was sickened beyond belief, but not so much that she couldn’t perform the necessary tucking and crossing of wires to try and bring his conscious back online.

There was a loud whirring noise and a series of pops and clicks. Wires retracted from his neck, sucked up into the skull, attaching in the necessary places, taking advantage of his built-in redundancies which allowed him to operate certain functionalities all over his body regardless of the integrity of the rest of him.

Or so she had read.

She held her breath, hardly believing what she’d dared to do, without thinking. She’d acted on impulse. She knew she desperately needed his help, but there had to be a better way, this was sick, this was cruel...it was too late. His eyes flickered open and shut with a stuttering, mechanical movement. His mouth opened and closed, making the bit of skin waggle sickeningly.

Then his eyes opened more naturally and his retinas spun and focused on her. He blinked rapidly and licked his lips. She stared at him in horror, wishing she could take it back and put him back to sleep, but she couldn’t, and didn’t she hate him, anyway, didn’t he deserve it, the smug, backstabbing bastard? It was no use. She couldn’t pretend to hate him. None of her old coping methods were any good here.   


“Y-Y-Y-vette,” he said, his voice catching like a scratched disk. There was a robotic quality to his voice that had never been there before, a tinny, artificial undertone.

“Rhys,” she breathed.

She watched him swallow convulsively, watched his eyes begin their slow travel downwards, and she wanted to stop him, to put her hands over his eye and keep him from looking, but surely he must know, surely he must already feel it, she’d read that he could feel…

Rhys stared down. She was kneeling on the ground and holding him above his own body. His skin had a sickly gray pallor. She watched him with a horrible, morbid fascination as he took in the scene, as he grappled with it. He continued trying to swallow, started blinking rapidly again.

He cleared his throat. Then hysterical laughter bubbled up in his mouth and spilled over. It was the familiar high, nervous, jarring giggle she’d heard so many times before, but so much worse. She felt it might drive her out of her mind if she listened too long.

He couldn’t stop. He was gasping and choking between laughs and tears were dripping down his eyes, big fat silvery tears, but still he went on laughing. It occurred to her there might be more internal damage she couldn’t see, that the lights might be out inside, Rhys as she knew him might be as mangled as his body.

As angry as she was at him for what he’d done, she hated whoever had done this even more.

“Rhys!” she shouted, unable to stand the sound another second. “Rhys, shut up! Shut up!”

“Gh-gh-gh — Y-Y-v-vette-ette — c-can’t st-st-stop m-m-make it st-stop-p, please.”

“I can’t,” she snarled, compensating for her horror with her rage, using it to fuel her, knowing that without it she would crumble to a puddle on the floor and then they’d both die here. “I overrode your emergency shutdown — lockdown — whatever.”

“Why!” Rhys screamed. His laughs were turning to sobs. “Why would you d-d-do that!”

“I don’t know!” she screamed right back. “I don’t know, Rhys! All I know is we just fell out of the fucking sky because of you — because of us — and everything’s on fire, and I don’t know what to do, and I found you like this and I — I freaked out!”

“Holy shit!”

“I know! Stop screaming!”

“I have n-n-no...f-f-fuck-fucking-ing b-body!”

“Well, you sure have got a mouth, you can scream alright.”

Rhys looked stricken, but he stopped screaming and crying at least. “Is th-that a f-fucking El-Ellison reference? Seriously?”

“Er...you’re right. Now’s not the time. Now we’ve gotta get out of here.”

“P-put m-me back to-togethor first.”

“That’s what I’m gonna try to do, but I’ll need your help. I’m gonna set you down for a second.”

“No! No! D-d-don’t you dare, Yvette,” he said. His murderous anger quickly melted into blubbering. He pleaded with her, begged through his tears. “P-p-please d-don’t leave, Yvette. I know you’re m-m-mad, b-b-but please don’t leave me li-like this.”

“I’m not leaving you,” she said. “Ok? Get that through your head right now. I’m not leaving you behind. I just —”

“D-d-don’t,” he sobbed.

“Fine, you big baby!” she snapped. She stood and tried to figure out how best to hold him without hurting him or grossing herself out.

“Alas, poor Yorick,” Rhys mumbled.

Yvette stared at him, eyes bugging. “Are you — seriously?”

Rhys giggled manically.

“Fucking theater kids,” Yvette muttered, and tucked him under her arm. “Listen up, Rhys. I don’t wanna have to come back to this burning shithole, so try and think of everything I’ll need to fix you up, at least the essentials. I’m gonna...look for something to carry it in while you come up with that.”

“J-Jack’s closet. To y-your lef-left.”

She went further into the office and found a large mahogany closet that was somehow miraculously undamaged. _ Figures. _ When she opened it it was as full of gaudy crap as she’d expected and a frankly horrifying number of yellow blazers. She pulled open the drawers at the bottom to find a rucksack she assumed was from the bygone days of flying off planet for conferences or whatever it was Jack got up to. She slung it over her shoulders.

“Man, this guy’s fashion choice are...criminal.”

“I k-k-kinda like them.”

Yvette sighed. “I know you do. So, Rhys...I need to thank you for letting me get into that escape pod. I would’ve waited for you, if not for...you know...Jack.”

“I know. I’m g-glad you’re ok.”

“And...I really am sorry about Vasquez.”   


“I already f-forgave you, Yvette.”

She hadn’t forgiven herself, but that was...well, it was a start. “Alright, so...what do I need to get to help you?”

“M-m-medical wing,” Rhys  said. “Engi-n-n-neering departmen-ent. If we c-can’t get to those, th-then...m-m-maintenance. Oh, f-first m-my office, or V-Vaughn’s office.”

“Maintenance?”

“L-last resort,” Rhys said, grimacing. “B-but...yeah.”

She made her way through the wreckage toting Rhys along in her arms. She tried not to look at him. It was slow going, but they had time. Not all the time in the world — some damage was better repaired in a timely manner. But he wouldn’t bleed out. She could afford to be cautious.

“Oh, I’m g-g-gonna b-be sick,” Rhys moaned. “I’m g-gonna puke. But I can’t. Oh, crap, oh, I just remembered it all over ag-again. Fuuuuuuck.”

“Don’t think about it,” Yvette snapped. Then her voice softened. “Rhys...who did this?”

“Uh...well...ha. We sure have a l-l-lot of catching up t-to d-do...uh...f-funny story, actually, you, you know Handsome J-Jack?”

Yvette rolled her eyes. “Of course I know Handsome Jack. Spit it out.”

“Well, he w-was...in m-m-my head? His AI? S-sorta just...l-living there. It’s a l-l-long story and I’d r-rather tell the r-r-rest when I’m n-n-not having phantom stomach cramps, so...short version: we had some d-disagreements, your head’s n-no place for a roommate, and he was a d-dick, so...he tried to kill me...I tried to kill him…”

Yvette was quiet for a long moment. So long that Rhys giggled. “Y-Yvette?”

“You did that to yourself?”

“S...sorta. Half. Yeah.”

“Jesus Christ, Rhys.”

“P-please...d-don’t...not right n-now.”

“I was just gonna say...he must’ve been really bad,” she said, feeling faint.

“...He was,” Rhys said quietly.

She gathers all kinds of instruments at his direction, some she understands and some she doesn’t. They take the nicest kits they find from both the medical bay and the engineering and tech departments. They take his own personal repairs kit (first aid kit, he’d always called it,) and a bunch of other fun junk too because...well, they’re having fun stealing. They get a bunch of food and some trinkets from their offices: her spare glasses and favorite book she kept in a drawer, Vaughn’s stress ball (a gift from the two of them,) and his chunky old calculator, Rhys’ stuffed cat (another gift Yvette won at a claw machine,) and two pairs of his favorite socks (he couldn’t decide on just one.)

“This is surreal,” Yvette said. “Picking and choosing what to bring, ‘cause we can’t carry it all. It’s like that game we used to play at lunch sometimes, what five things would you bring to a deserted island. That’s us.”

“You should, uh...g-get some lady stuff.”

“Lady stuff?”

“Yeah. L-like p-period stuff. It’s hard to c-come by here.”

“Oh. Wow. Thanks, Rhys, shit, I didn’t even think about that.”

By the time they’re through her pack is bulging. She can barely get the thing shut and ties a bungee cord around the whole thing for good measure.

“G-g-gardening department,” Rhys said.

“We have a gardening department? Since when?”

“Since forever! We g-grow most of our own f-f-food, Yvette. Where’d you think all those free lunches came from?” He smirked at her.

“Oh. Very true,” she said. “But why do we need to go there?”

“Wheelbarrow.”

“Ah, yes. A survival essential. Remind me again, oh wise one, why the hell we need one of those?”

“F-for me.”

“For you?”

“For m-my — you know! Body parts!”

“Oh,” Yvette said, nodding. “Yeah. I’d forgotten about the horrors yet to come. Thanks for reminding me.”  
“This isn’t f-fun for me either,” he snapped.

“Hey, chill. I’m just saying, you know. Not looking forward to picking your headless body off the floor.”

“Well...you do that, and help put me back together, and we’re square for the whole selling me out to Vasquez thing. How’s that?”   


“Sounds good.”

“And you have to buy me lunch.”

“I don’t even know where to do that here. Maybe I can kill something and roast it for you.”

“Aw, you’re the sweetest. And I also want...a massage. And a c-car.”   


“I can’t get you a car, Rhys.”

For the rest of their long walk he continued rattling off things he wanted. Normally his rambling annoyed her but she didn’t tell him to shut up because his voice was grounding her and keeping her from curling up in a ball on the floor and never getting up. He depended on her—she had to keep going. She had to make it up to him, had to fix things, had to be better, somehow. If she even could. But she at least had to try. And anyway, it seemed to be helping his auto-repair functions fix the stuttering catch in his voice.

“And I want a cooler arm that’s n-not yellow. And I want a cheeseburger and a milkshake. And I want a big giant bathtub. And a hot t-t-tub. And a pool. Aaaaaand I want cool sunglasses. Like...green on one side, blue on the other side. No! Uh...blue and...a different color.”

Yvette was sweating and panting by the time they made it back to Jack’s office. She...really wished she’d stuck to an exercise regimen before this. Oh well, too late now.

“Is there a way you’d prefer I go about this?” she asked.

“Um...quickly? This is really uncomfortable.”

Yvette nodded and pried his metal arm off the spike, set it in the wheelbarrow. She set his head down on the ground, facing away from his body.

“Sorry Rhys, probably better you don’t watch this or you’re gonna feel phantom barf again,” she said, grunting as she hauled him up. He was heavy, and sticky, and so freaking tall she had to arrange him once he was in the wheelbarrow so his legs didn’t dangle on the ground. Then she draped one of Handsome Jack’s cloak thingies over the whole thing and placed his head on top.

Rhys had his eyes squeezed shut. “This is fucked up.”

“Oh, this is by far the most fucked up thing ever.”

“This is, like, maybe even the second worst day of my life. Second or third.”

“Are you for freaking real?” she huffed, pushing the cart back outside into the night. “What could possibly be worse than this?”

“Um...hard to choose from the other days Jack was in my head. And also Vasquez’s New Year’s party that one year. You know the one.”

“Ah, yes,” she said, nodding. “I do. So where are we going, exactly?”

“I...don’t know.”

“Rhys! You’ve been here longer than I have, you gotta help me out here.”

“It’s hard to think like this,” he snapped. “Just be glad I’m not screaming bloody murder, because that’s what I’ve been doing on the inside this whole time.”

“Yeah, please don’t. I don’t wanna attract any wildlife with your distress calls.”

“Oh, uh...I don’t think we have to worry about that. The crash probably scared them away. Probably. For now.”

“Great. You do know I’m not armed, right?”

“Well hope we don’t run into a skag, then, ‘cause I’m not gonna be able to help you.”

“Where should I go!”

“Don’t yell at me!”

“I’m not yelling at you, just — in general!”

“Ok,” Rhys whimpered, and damn him, she just knew he was pouting, and that he actually had a reason to, unlike literally every other time.

“I’m just gonna...head to the less fiery part and...hope for a bedroom or something.”

“Presidential suite!” Rhys said.

So materialism and the prospect of luxury could still snap him out of a mood in a second. Good to know.

She did, in fact, find a presidential suite, and it was worth every step she had to walk across scalding metal in heels.

“Oh my God,” Rhys gushed. “Would you look at this place?”

“I know,” Yvette said, equally floored. For a moment the two of them just stared around at the large, lush bedroom, salivating like a couple of hungry dogs. Then Yvette set to work.

The most important thing was to make sure all of the wiring in his head was stable and secure. He had a good automatic recovery system that would hopefully keep anything irreparable from happening, but even though his body was tough it was never meant to sustain the level of damage it had. So her first order of business was to open his kit (covered in dumb stickers he’d accumulated over the years,) and go poke around in his skull and in his damaged port.

She sat at the bar in the suite’s kitchen while she worked.

“So...I think we’re really getting to know each other,” Rhys said. He was quite clearly not having a good time. Well, that made two of them. Were she not overwhelmed to the point of numbness she would’ve had more sympathy.

“In ways I never imagined,” she said. “But hey, your voice isn’t so glitchy anymore, so that probably means your auto-repair is doing its job. Just a quick question — why did you decapitate yourself?”

“I was pretty desperate at that point to initiate the emergency shutdown protocols and forced reboot.”

“Which you couldn’t just command yourself to do because…?”

“Because I don’t have authorization, Yvette. I can’t do that kind of thing for myself.”

“Oh, right,” she muttered. That always had been a touchy subject. “But...how’d you know it wouldn’t kill you? You know, damage you so bad you couldn’t get better?”

“I didn’t.”

“What?”

“I didn’t know! I just had to get rid of him.”

“So — he was trying to kill you, and you were trying to kill him, and you were both in the same body, so — what’s the difference?”

“The difference is...it’s my body. Only I get to kill it. I know that sounds crazy! I don’t know, Yvette, I wasn’t thinking, you don’t know what it’s been like. I just...couldn’t take it anymore. I needed it to be over one way or another, right then.”

“Alright,” she murmured. She pulled the first aid kit closer and set about cleaning the blood off his face. She glued the skin back in place and that made a huge difference. Not necessarily a good one. Now he just looked less like a decapitated robot and more like a decapitated human. Oh, well.

“You’re gonna need somebody other than me to help you out, Rhys. I can only do so much.”

“I know. Let’s just...get through tonight. Can you get this thing out of my belly now, please?”

“Oh, my god,” she said, standing abruptly. “You can — you can feel that?”

“Yes,” he said, voice strained. “It’s my body, Yvette, I can feel everything! I mean, alright, I think my brain’s, like, really past its ability to process pain, so it’s not excruciating, but its’ really weird and uncomfortable and gross and bad.”

“Ok, ok. You’re like a cockroach.”   


Rhys looked pained. “Please don’t ever say anything like that to me again.”

“Fine, you’re so sensitive,” she muttered, and walked to the bed where she’d laid his body. “What do I do?”

“I don’t know! I’m not a doctor! Just get it out!”

“This is...this sucks,” she said, and pulled the spike from his torso. It didn’t come easily; it slid slowly out with a wet sucking noise. Then it was free.

Rhys whined. “Oh, god, oh, god, help me, fuck. I’m never going to be the same. I’m scarred for life.”

Yvette was panting and wide-eyed. She tossed the spike of metal aside. “I can see your guts,” she said.

“Well stop looking! That’s private! Nobody’s supposed to see your guts, ever, Yvette! You know who’s especially not supposed to see my guts? Me! Cover them up!”   


“I kinda think I need to poke around in there.”

“No! Don’t you dare!”

“Do you want my help or what?”

“I want this to be a fucked up dream.”

“You and me both, pal,” she said. “I need to pack your wounds with that gooey stuff. The preservative stuff. So you don’t...leak everywhere and get all contaminated and gross.”

“Ok. It’s in my kit.”

She retrieved the packet of goo that probably had a really long dorky name she’d never bothered to memorize and ripped the cap off. She squeezed it into the hole in his head, his eye, his stomach. Then she covered where his arm had been and at last both halves of his neck.

“Oh, fuck me, why didn’t we do this part first,” he said.

“Does it feel good?”

“Well, it makes me feel less like one giant bleeding mess, if that’s what you mean. So can you, um...maybe put my head back on my body, now?”

“Is it gonna...just reattach?”   


“Maybe? I’ve never done this before!”

“Well, it’s my first time too, let’s just take it slow.”

“Sometimes I forget how gross you can be. Please no sex metaphors while my decapitated body is just laying there? Is that too much to ask?”

She carried his head over and positioned it as best she could.

“Can you...er...not watch?” he said.

“Performance anxiety? Happens to the best of us,” she said, and turned away as he groaned and rolled his eye.

“Oh, shit, I think it’s working. Sort’ve. Maybe. I can’t really...move...but still. Improvement.”

“You’re gonna need a doctor. And a software engineer. And probably a team of bioengineers and surgeons. And maybe a neuro specialist. And probably a horde of psychologists for when they’re done with you. But for tonight...you’re gonna be ok.” She turned back around to find him smiling at her.

“Thank you, Yvette. I know that wasn’t...pleasant.”

“Well, it ain’t over.”

“No. And...it’s probably not going to get any more pleasant. Sorry about that. There’s gonna be a lot of walking, so...you might want to find different shoes.”

“Great, my favorite pastime. Right now I just want to sleep,” she said, yawning.

“I’m so comfy, don’t put me on the floor.”

She squirmed. “Eh, but, Rhys, no offense, you’re still kinda gross and oozy…”

“I can’t move! It’s not like I’m gonna roll over on you or something. Geez. This bed is huge. Four people could sleep on this thing and still not be touching.”

“Alright, alright,” she said, still creeped out but too tired to argue, and not really willing to move him or find another room anyway. And, well. She wasn’t much less gross when you got right down to it. She had his...fluids all over her. Ugh. She should probably shower...but it was too late. As soon as she lay down she knew she wouldn’t be getting up again. Not even if the whole station started collapsing on top of them. She shut down and fell hard and fast into sleep.

For one blissful moment when she woke she was cradled in the remnants of a dream and she forgot where she was. Then she rolled over onto her side to find Rhys staring at her. Yvette yelped and fell off the bed. Rhys snickered.

“Oh, so creepy, Rhys! Were you watching me sleep?”

“No! ...Maybe? A little. I was bored but I didn’t wanna wake you up.”

“Did you not sleep well?”

“I think whatever it is that lets me sleep is a little...broken.”

“But...don’t you need to?”

“Yeah. Unless you’ve got a battery to plug me into.”

“Definitely don’t have that,” she muttered, sitting on the bed. Daylight streamed in through the window. “So what now?”

“I’ve been thinking, and...our best bet is probably to find some friends of mine.”

“Can they fix you?”   


“Well, no, but it’s no good for us to be on Pandora alone and defenseless.”

“But if we hang around here we’ll be fine, right? Didn’t you say this probably scared away the wildlife?”   


“Probably! That seems logical, right? But I’m not a zoologist, Yvette, I was kind’ve...just saying that because we didn’t have another choice. There was nowhere nearby you were gonna manage to walk to last night.”

“So you lied?”

“Not really, I mean, I’d run the other way if I saw this falling out of the sky, so. Makes sense. But...we should really look for Fiona and Sasha. Hopefully they’re alright.”

“Those con-artist chicks?”

“Yeah. They’ll help us.”

“Are you sure? I mean...didn’t they sort’ve...leave you stranded on Helios? And flip out when they learned about Jack?”

Rhys was quiet for a moment. When he spoke he was more chipper than he had any right to be. “I’m sure they’ll get over it! Look, they don’t...I don’t know why they left. Probably they heard Jack blabbering on the comms and thought… But I’m sure they won’t just leave us to die.”

Yvette didn’t really have any better options, which was depressing. She loaded him into the wheelbarrow and they left the suite. As they made their way through the wreckage they heard distant metal scraping and tearing sounds.

“What...what’s that?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Let’s go see.”

“Um, how about no?”

“Yeah, you’re right. Ok.”

The decision was taken from them as the noise grew closer, rapidly closing in on them with a sound like heavy running footsteps.

Yvette hardly had time to go another step before something huge and yellow was barring their path.

Rhys shrieked. “Endoskeleton! No, no, no, get it away from me!”

“It is just me, father, do not be alarmed,” said Loader Bot.

“L...Loader Bot? Is that you?”

“Yes. That is what I just said. You do not look well.”

“Uh...I’m ok. Well. Not really. But, you, you look. Tall,” Rhys said, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat. “Nice new look, buddy. Really. Love it. I’m really glad you’re ok.”

“As am I. It is good to see you. You have spared me the trouble of having to hunt down and capture you. Now you can help me do so to Fiona.”

“Wh...what?”   


“I must learn the truth.”

“I’m sorry, what the hell?” Yvette said.

Loader Bot turned his red eye on her and was quiet for a moment. “Is this your handler?”

“What? No,” Rhys said, looking disgruntled. “This is Yvette.”

“I am sorry if I offended you. Let me rephrase. I meant, is she helping or holding you hostage, and shall I liberate her of the use of her arms?”

“Um, no, thank you!” Rhys said, giggling. “Yvette’s a friend, LB, she’s helping me. You — you must remember Yvette, right? She sent you down here.”

“Hi,” Yvette said.

“Hm. Yes. I have tried to forget that part of my existence. So now the two of you will come with me to find Fiona?”

“What’s all that about?”

“She destroyed Gortys. I must know why.”

“She...what? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know. I have gathered her and intend to hear Fiona’s side of the story before determining what action to take. Either way, Gortys will be mended,” Loader Bot said, gesturing to the sack he carried over his shoulder.

“Well...well, yeah, we’ll come along,” Rhys said. “There must be a good reason. Fiona wouldn’t just...that doesn’t make sense. Gortys is her friend.”

“That is my thought also. But sometimes humans behave strangely when put to the test. Under duress I have found many will reveal the limits of their friendship and will happily revert to treating you as inanimate if it becomes convenient for them.”

Rhys looked intensely uncomfortable. “Not Fiona. She loved Gortys.”

“Yes. She also had a tendency to infantilize her and to often treat her as a pet. A much loved pet. But a pet or mascot nonetheless.”

“No, that’s just...that’s because Gortys seems young, you know? It’s like — like how she’d treat a little sister. Littler than Sasha.”

“Perhaps. Either way the fact remains that she destroyed her with a rocket launcher. I must know why. Will you help me fix her?”

“Of course!” Rhys said. “But, er...I’m a little...paralyzed, at the moment.”

“We will have to find someone to fix you, then, as well. Which will likely not be difficult. You are less structurally complex than Gortys by a factor of ten.”

“Hey!”

“That was not an insult. It was meant to comfort you. I still do not always understand your disposition towards your nature well enough to avoid offending you. I am sorry.”

“Eugh,” Rhys said. “It’s...fine. I’m not really mad. Let’s just go. Maybe you can help Yvette a little? She’s kind’ve got noodle arms.”   


Yvette didn’t even bother arguing that fact and let Loader Bot push the wheelbarrow. Rhys chatted amicably all day as though they were on some exotic vacation together and he didn’t have a care in the world. Probably he was just enjoying the fact that he didn’t have to walk and was getting carted around, Yvette thought. The guy had a prissy ego, that was for sure. Though she guessed it would be hard for him not to, what with Vasquez being his original handler…

The thought alarmed her after the conversation she’d just overheard. She’d never really heard Rhys talk to other...non-humans before. In fact, looking back she could even see that he’d avoided it. She’d been his friend for years, since college, where Vasquez had stuck him because he thought it was funny to have a pedigree android with a computer science degree, because it was all a big joke to him. Well, joke was on him, Rhys worked his ass off and was promoted up the ladder, which she suspected was only possible because their higher-ups were assholes who also thought it was funny. She’d always thought she was different from them, that she saw him as she saw any of her other colleagues, but thoughts like that, which she couldn’t help...did they prove otherwise? Was she secretly just like Vasquez, only better at hiding it, from him and from herself?

“I wish Vaughn was here,” Rhys sighed. “Where’s Vaughn, LB?”

“I do not know. But he is resourceful. I am sure we will find him.”

When Rhys and Vaughn met, Vaughn hadn’t known immediately that he was an android, or so the story went. From what Yvette had been told, they’d become close almost immediately and were attached at the hip by the end of their freshman year. By senior year Vasquez was tired of having a pet android and was ready to sell his handler’s contract, which would likely mean the nullification of all the credits Rhys had earned. He would not complete his degree, he would lose all his hopes of having a position in the company in his own field of choice. The personality profile he’d built through his own experiences might even get wiped. He went to Vaughn in tears and begged him to buy the contract. Vaughn was, understandably, distraught. He didn’t have the money, he was just an undergrad himself, he was a nobody to someone like Vasquez, he was a joke. Which was precisely why the ploy worked when the two of them showed up at Vasquez’s office, Rhys puffy-eyed and unable to stop crying, Vaughn stammering and painfully socially awkward, asking him if they could please pay for the contract in installments over the next few years. Vasquez laughed in their faces and signed Vaughn on as handler right then and there, wished him good luck dealing with the mountains of paperwork that allowed Rhys’ continued existence. The rest was history.

Yvette suspected Rhys had never really gotten over the degrading humiliation of that day, and of the days before it of being Vasquez’s toy, little more than a neat party trick, something he’d signed on for as a whim. Why else would he have so ruthlessly and determinedly put up with Hyperion’s BS just to climb the corporate ladder from one thankless job to the next? Other than, she supposed, he had nowhere else to go.

“I don’t know…” Rhys sighed. “Can we look for him now? What if something happened to him? Vaughn’s, you know, he’s smart and all, but...he shouldn’t be out there all alone.”

“Just call him,” Yvette said.

“Oh, sure, let me call him, Yvette, right away, oh wait — that’s right, my entire body is broken.”

“Oh yeah. Well...I’ll try,” she said, pulling out the comm she still somehow had in her pocket. The screen was busted. She smacked it a couple times, then tucked it away again. 

“Nope. Broken. But, uh, Rhys...if Vaughn’s got any tech on him, he’ll be able to see where you are.”

“Oh, yeah,” Rhys said, sounding for the first time in his life relieved rather than irritated by the fact that, as his handler, Vaughn could pull up his whereabouts at all times. “Will that work on Pandora, though?”

“Yes, though the mapping features will be of a low quality,” said Loader Bot.

“Ok,” Rhys mumbled, and then they walked in silence for a while. The sun was high above them now. It blazed down. Yvette wiped the sweat from her brow and realized she couldn’t remember the last time she’d really felt a strain in her calves, felt sweat beading all over, felt the sun heating her skin.

“I’m bored,” Rhys whined.

“Hello, bored, I’m Loader Bot,” said Loader Bot.

Rhys blinked and then laughed. “Ah, shit, that was, like, reverse dad humor. Good one.”

Yvette groaned. “You’re both monsters. Don’t ever make a joke again.”

“Yes, master,” said Loader Bot.

Yvette paled. “Hang on, I wasn’t, like, giving an order, or something, don’t, like internalize that in your processors, or whatever it is you do.”

Rhys cackled. “He got you, Yvette.”

“Oh, goddamnit.”

They came upon a derelict outpost. Loader Bot stopped pushing the cart. “This seems a good place to construct a temporary base. Defensible. We can stay here while I bring Fiona in for questioning and search for Vaughn.”

“Sounds great,” Yvette gasped, clutching the stitch in her side.

For the rest of the day Loader Bot holed himself up in a room with a bunch of techy equipment Yvette couldn’t make heads nor tails of while she was left with the delightful task of cleaning up to make the base halfway bearable to live in. She sat Rhys on a dusty chair and cleaned up while he stared at her.

“I miss Vaughn,” he sighed.

“I know,” she said through gritted teeth. She was getting tired of him talking about Vaughn.

“Don’t you?”

“Yes, Rhys, but talking about how much we miss him isn’t gonna make him magically appear.”

“What if something bad happened to him?” Rhys fretted.

“Rhys! For God’s sake! Just — nothing’s happened to him, he’s perfectly fine!”

“How do you know!”

“I just do.”

Rhys pouted in silence for a few minutes. Then he said, “Hey, Yvette, not to make this about me...and this is gonna make me sound like a real asshole, but I swear it’s not the main reason I’m worried about him, of course it’s not, but um...if...well...would you be my contract holder?”  
Yvette stopped hauling a rusted piece of metal out the door and stood, let it drop. “Seriously, Rhys? That’s what you’re worried about?”  


“I just told you it’s not! It just occurred to me, and I wanted to ask.”

“I don’t know, Rhys.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know! Yvette, if I don’t have one, they’ll — I don’t really know, but it’ll be bad, I might get demoted, I might get sent away, I might get...recycled.”

“Helios is destroyed, Rhys. Sure, Hyperion’s still out there, but not anywhere near Pandora, and I honestly doubt they’ll ever come anywhere near here again. So that’s the least of your worries right now.”

“But would you?” he said quietly.

“I don’t know. I don’t want to own another person.”

“Well, I don’t like it either.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

This was ridiculous. Now he was mad at her. She huffed and ignored him for the next few hours.

Come nightfall and Loader Bot had still yet to emerge from his room. It was cold on Pandora at night and Yvette didn’t know how to make a fire. At least the walls offered some protection. She wrapped a musty blanket around herself and laid one on top of Rhys, then dug in her pack for some of the food they’d taken. She devoured two protein bars and an apple. She offered some to Rhys but he just shook his head.

“Don’t you have to eat?”

“I dunno,” he mumbled. He was glassy-eyed, doing that hundred-yard stare that usually let her know he was either daydreaming or doing something with his memory banks or fiddling with his ECHO display.

“Uh, well, you do. That was a rhetorical question.”

“Nuh-uh. Don’t wanna.”

“What’s wrong with you? You weren’t this spacey earlier.”

Rhys blinked blearily at her. His eye seemed to have trouble focusing. “Fiona?”

“No. No, not Fiona.” She got to her feet and walked over to him, put her hands on her hips. “Do I look like some scruffy Pandoran crook to you?”

“Uh...my tummy hurts.”

“Your tummy hurts?” she said, incredulous. “What are you, five?”

“Ugh...I feel weird.”

The light on his port had gone yellow. Crap. She didn’t remember what that meant. She pulled the blanket off of him and unbuttoned his shirt around his wound to get a better look. She sucked in a breath through her teeth. The gel was changing color. He was leaking blood and some kind of oily looking substance into it. The red and dark silvery ooze was swirling in the clear goo. That...didn’t look good.

“Rhys, you’re leaking, or something. Er. Internal bleeding? What do I do?”

“Don’t know…”

“Oh, you’ve gotta do better than that,” she said. “Help me out here.”

“I want Vaughn,” he mumbled, his face crumpling.

Her panic made Yvette lose her temper. “I want Vaughn, too! Don’t you start crying, don’t you dare, you fucking crybaby. I need you to tell me what to do.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, tearfully. “A...Athena?”

“What?”

Rhys didn’t respond. Yvette went and banged on the door until Loader Bot came out. “He’s getting worse,” she said. “I don’t know what to do, and I don’t think he does either. He just said Athena and I have no idea what that means.”

Loader Bot thought for a second. “Let me make a call,” he said.

“Make a — we don’t have time for calls!”

“It will hopefully be a useful call.”

He went away and got on the comms. Yvette paced. When he returned he said, “Athena has agreed to send an associate of hers our way to help Rhys. She is so fascinated by him that she has agreed to provide her services for free, so long as she gets to...poke around with him a little.”

“I don’t think he’ll like that.”

“If it saves him, I do not really care how he feels about it.”

Yvette snorted. “You and me both.”

 

Gaige showed up the next afternoon, toolkit in hand, manic grin on her face. She kicked in the door to find Yvette on her knees attempting to spoonfeed Rhys mashed fruit.

“Hello, new best friend!” she crowed. “Where’s my poor little boo boo?”

“Uh...what?” said Yvette.

Rhys’ brow scrunched. “Mommy?”

Yvette smacked her palm across her face as Gaige cackled. She had a manic, snorting laugh that reminded her so much of Rhys when he cracked himself up over his own joke that she could already foresee these two giving her migraines.

Gaige swooped in and plunked her heavy kit to the floor. It rattled with a thud and was clearly heavier than it looked. She nudged Yvette out of the way and grinned wildly in Rhys’ face. “Aw, poor little guy! Somebody beat you all up! Don’t worry, mama Gaige is here now!”

Rhys blinked and gave her the polite, confused smile Yvette was used to seeing when he was at a party or conference and trying to be nice to somebody who remembered him from somewhere but whom he didn’t recognize. He’d always more been the type for useless niceties like that than she or Vaughn. She tended to stare at them coldly. Vaughn tended to run away and hide.

“You’re pretty,” Rhys said, giggling and giving her a dopey smile.

“Aw, thank you! You’re pretty cute yourself,” Gaige said, looking him up and down.

“Ugh,” Yvette said. “So...you can fix him?”

“Oh, definitely! As soon as I poke around a little and see what makes him tick! Wow, a real Hyperion android, this is the best day ever! I’ve always wanted to get my hands all over one of you!”

Rhys giggled and blushed.

“He’s delirious,” Yvette said dryly. “Listen, if he were all there right now, he wouldn’t want you poking around in him, so...be respectful?”

“Of course I will!” Gaige said, springing up and walking around the chair. She did something to the back of his head and then a compartment opened up in the back of his neck displaying a tiny panel of minuscule buttons and ridges.

Rhys bit his lip. “Oh...I didn’t know I did that.”

“Of course you didn’t! This is the user panel, silly! This might feel funny, I’m just testing your internal processors. Oh, wow, I always did wonder how you guys got the thermoregulators to maintain homeostasis…”

Rhys was blushing and fluttering his lashes. Ugh. He looked at Yvette, completely besotted. “She’s smart.”

Yvette was horrified. “Oh, God, there’s two of them. One computer nerd was enough,” she groaned.

“Oh, this little guy’s much more than a computer,” Gaige said. “This is the finest bit of hardware I’ve ever gotten my hands on. Other than my personal projects, of course.”   


“Am I really?” Rhys said.

“I can’t believe this,” Yvette said. But she really could. He’d take anything as a compliment. He was totally preening and fawning at the attention.

“You are,” Gaige gushed, using the kind of voice Yvette imagined you spoke to babies or small dogs with. She’d never used it herself. “Do you feel anything when I do this?”   


“Yeahhhhhhh.”

“Ok! What about this?”

Rhys yelped.

“Good! And this?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“No problem, I’ll fix it! Not to worry,” she said, patting him on the head. “I know what I’m doing!”

“Normally people who know what they’re doing don’t feel the need to declare it,” Yvette said.

Gaige blinked and seemed to finally recognize there was another person in the room. “Who are you?”   


“Yvette.”

“Ah! Is this fine piece of engineering yours?”   


“I’m his friend.”

Gaige stuck out a hand and shook Yvette’s up and down enthusiastically. “Great! I’m Gaige! And he is…?”

“Rhys,” Yvette said.

“Does that stand for something?”

“It’s just Rhys,” Yvette said, a bit of steel in her voice.

“O-k then! Just Rhys it is.”

Yvette couldn’t complain about her work ethic. Gaige immediately began operating, first on the mangled port. She let out a low whistle. “Ah, Rhysie, who did this to you?”   


Rhys flinched. “Um...me.”

“It’s a long story,” Yvette cut in.

“Well, this is gonna take me a while!”   


“I had Handsome Jack inside of me,” Rhys said.

Gaige blinked at him. “Uh...wow! Good for you, champ!”

“Handsome Jack’s AI was in his brain,” Yvette snapped.

“Oh, wow! Get ‘em, tiger! That’s some seriously kinky interfacing!”   


Rhys blushed. “I know…”

“Rhys!” Yvette said. “Come on! Not everybody needs to know about your crush on Handsome Jack, ok?”

“Ohhh,” Gaige said, like a twelve-year old on the playground discussing romance. “You had a crush on Handsome Jack’s AI? Aw! That is so sweet! A star-crossed love story for the ages!”   


“Jack is the reason he’s all fucked up, it’s not sweet.”

“He was sweet sometimes,” Rhys said.

“Yeah, that’s how they get ya,” Gaige said, nodding sympathetically. “If they’re sweet just one percent of the time, they know certain people will allllways keep coming back. Textbook. They know how to pick their targets. Sorry, Rhys, better luck next time not getting with a complete douchebag, though, sorry, you really should’ve known what you were getting into with that one!”   


Gaige cleaned up the port and applied some kind of resin from her kit around its jagged edge. “This is gonna take a trip to the body shop,” she joked. “But I can keep it from being a danger to you for now, at least.”

“Thanks,” said Rhys.

From the hole in his head and eye you could see the glowing components of his head. It was eerie. He’d never looked anything less than human, aside from the arm, which was an upgrade he only got after he and Vaughn began conspiring to move up the corporate ladder. Now there was no mistaking that he was made of something other than flesh. He was going to hate it when he stopped being delirious, Yvette thought.

Gaige used a kind of tiny vacuum to suck the gel out of the hole in his stomach. Rhys made a face as she did so and Gaige gave him a sympathetic pat on the head.

“I’m gonna numb you down here now,” she said, poking at the panel on the back of his neck again. “It’ll feel funny, but it’ll keep you from hurting while I clean you up.”

She put on a pair of goggles that magnified her eyes until she looked like a grotesque fly, and then went to work snipping and replacing wires, threading him back together. She replaced parts and then filled him with the same goo as before. She took a roll of synthetic fibers out of her it and cut a piece out the size of the hole in his back and stomach. Yvette helped prop him up as she stitched the artificial skin on.

“This will blend in with the rest of your skin soon,” she said. “It’s smart, it’ll learn. The stitches will fall out. There miiiight be a little bit of scarring around the seam, sorry about that. But it’ll be be just as functional as you were before, as long as you don’t do any heavy lifting for the next few weeks!”

“Don’t worry about that, Rhys hasn’t done any heavy lifting in his life,” Yvette muttered.

Gaige chatted amiably with Rhys throughout the operation. They hit on the topic of some kind of paradox in computer science at which point Yvette zoned out.

“I’ve gotta poke around in your neurocomputational matrix now and relink your nerve chords,” said Gaige.

“Uh...my what?”

Gaige rapped on his skull. “Your noggin, Rhys. Your brain. Keep up, pretty boy.”

“Am I pretty?”

“The prettiest,” she said, and went to work opening a panel and prying it open from the top of his skull.

Rhys flinched and whimpered.

“Does that hurt?” Gaige asked quickly. “It shouldn’t.”

“No, it’s just weird.”

“Well...I guess. It’s not that weird. It’s how you’re made.”

Rhys made a face. Yvette knew he was going to have some baggage from this whole experience for a long, long time. He liked to live under the delusion that his body functioned as any human’s did. Reminders that it didn’t triggered some kind of...well, she didn’t know what to call it. Dysphoric silent depressive tantrums? He’d clam up and avoid people for days, or else break down and do something impulsive and self-destructive like having sex with a string of strangers, all of whom wanted to do weird things with his body he wasn’t entirely comfortable with.

So, yeah. She wasn’t looking forward to that.

She worked quickly, efficiently, and with surprising delicacy. At one point Rhys’ fingers twitched and he gasped.

“Yay!” Gaige squealed. “I was worried you were gonna be fried, but it’s all just disconnected! I’ll have you walking in...an hour?”

“Oh, thank you, sweet Jesus,” Rhys moaned.

When Gaige was done she shut the panel and smoothed his hair.

“Well, that’s about all I can do for now, baby cakes. You’re gonna need a couple checkups to make sure you’re running smooth under the hood!” she said, tapping his skull and giggling. “It may take a few weeks for full motor control to resume as you’re used to.” She then rattled off a list of possible symptoms he might experience in the interim. “Tingling, numbness, muscle spasms or twitches, mood swings, odd sensations, random but quick pains, headaches, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, nosebleeds, vivid dreams, lags, slower memory recall, incoordination...I may be forgetting something! But I’ll be in touch, here’s my card,” she said, slipping it into his breast pocket.

“Thank you,” Rhys said.

“My pleasure,” she said. “Give me a call!”

She waved at him and went to the door, where Yvette again shook her hand. “Thank you so much,” she said.

“Really, I should thank you,” Gaige said. “He’s fascinating. We’ve got nothing like him on Pandora. Take good care of him.”

“Of course.”

Then she left.

“Yvette, look,” Rhys said.

She turned. He was curling his fingers and smiling at her. She smiled back. They were softer, kinder smiles than either of them had made in a long, long time; tired, private smiles. They slept together on a ratty mattress tucked in the corner. Now that he could move again he was the same blanket hog he’d always been, but she couldn’t bring herself to mind. She was overcome with how glad she was he was alive and found herself reaching out in the night to touch him, just the barest connection between the backs of her fingers and his back. He was warm. She slept easily.


End file.
